Bhuddists at the
Hwagyesa Monastery, one of Korea's oldest, chant the
Diamond Sutra at the end of a meditation session.
It shouldn't have been that disconcerting to hear an evangelical
Protestant minister extol God's goodness for guiding the Pilgrims
safely to America, where they could establish a Christian
ethic that would one day shape the moral values of a nation. Granted,
the church was stadium-sized, the 100-person choir was accompanied
by a 32-piece orchestra and the service was being televised to millions,
but we Americans are used to television ministries that have somehow
managed to hybridize Puritan-inspired religion and Hollywood spectaculars.
Except this wasn't America: it was Korea, known in theology circles
as home to the purest Buddhism in Asia.
The pre-Thanksgiving Sunday service that I and 25,000 other attendees
were witnessing took place in the Yoido Full Gospel Church of Seoul,
South Korea, which, at 800,000 members (many of whom were watching via
simultaneous transmission in satellite churches around the country)
calls itself the biggest church in the world. Evangelical Christianity
took hold here following the Korean War, when many Koreans studied
in the United States, sometimes on church scholarships, and returned
influenced by Western ideas. In recent decades, as South Korea's social philosophy segued from
the ancestor worship of Confucianism to free market capitalism,
the country has undergone a spiritual conversion,
and is now nearly fifty percent Christian. Christians and Buddhists alike told me, with pride
and concern respectively, that to get elected these days, South
Korean politicians have to be Christian. Although Korean Protestant
churches maintain strong ties with their American evangelical counterparts,
in this now-prosperous country they aren't dependent on them. In fact Yoido
Full Gospel actually sends missionaries to the United
States, and maintains its own Bible college in Orange County, California.
Worshipers gather
for a service at Yoido Full Gospel Church, which holds
up to 25,000 in its pews.
Korea's religious transformation hasn't been painless. In the 1990s, temples were burned and Buddha statues were beheaded as a Christian
president openly equated Buddhist and Satanic images. The conflict is no longer so open. But Korean Buddhists today worry about being overwhelmed in
a society where commercialism and religion grow increasingly indistinguishable.
Downtown Seoul's Jogye-sa Temple, center of the largest sect of
Korean Buddhism, has recently been surrounded by 25-story buildings that
in the past would never have been permitted. The glass from one
of the highest skyscrapers reflects light so intensely into an adjacent
temple that monks can't meditate, even with their eyes closed. The
building's Swedish architect was horrified to learn this—in
his country, reflective angles are carefully controlled to avoid
violating a church's holy sanctum. But here, a Buddhist monk told
me, no one even bothered to consult them. "It's like we no
longer exist."
Listen
to the story
